Doesn’t make up for work lost due to in­shore shrimp quota cuts

Martin Sul­li­van, CEO of Ocean Choice In­ter­na­tional (OCI), says the CETA (Canada-Euro­pean Trade Agree­ment) agree­ment has helped fa­cil­i­tate some ad­di­tional work at the Port au Choix shrimp plant this sum­mer. How­ever, it hasn’t been able to make up for the hit work­ers took from the in­shore quota cut.

OCI pro­cesses shrimp at the plant in Port au Choix. With tar­iffs lifted thanks to CETA – Canada and the Euro­pean Union’s free trade agree­ment – OCI has been able to process some shrimp there for Euro­pean mar­kets they couldn’t be­fore.

“The in­dus­trial shrimp that’s pro­duced on the off­shore boats, if we peeled that here, there was a 20 per cent duty go­ing into the EU and now we can send it in (to Europe) du­tyfree,” Sul­li­van ex­plains.

They have been pre­par­ing some of this off­shore shrimp this sum­mer in an­tic­i­pa­tion of CETA’s pro­vi­sional ap­pli­ca­tion on Sept. 21.

Sul­li­van says the ar­range­ment hasn’t been able to make up for the work lost by the in­shore shrimp quota cuts, though it has been able to sup­ple­ment the plant’s in­take to ex­tend the sea­son some­what.

“It de­pends on the catch rates and ev­ery­thing else,” said Sul­li­van. “It’s not huge this year but in a year where you’re get­ting only part weeks, it helps fill up the part weeks a bit – it helps make bet­ter work weeks for every­one.

“It’s not go­ing to have a huge im­pact on the to­tal num­ber of weeks but it all helps, es­pe­cially in an en­vi­ron­ment where the shrimp has been cut back so much.”